I think it has been well-established that Detroit is an urban wasteland . . . iirc, this was covered in mgoblog sometime in the last few years.

My question . . . what effect, if any, does the economy in Michigan, and the Detroit area in particular, have on U of M, both in general, and in sports recruiting? When a student in the 70's and 80's, there were always a ton of students from Troy, Royal Oak, Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe and Warren, etc., etc. Is that shifting? Is Michigan taking more out of state/out of area kids?

As regards recruiting, is Detroit now on a par with Pahokee, or WVa, where college sports is one of the few ways for underclass kids to escape? Could the silver lining in the crummy economy be that the worse things get in metro-Detroit, the better things are for sports recruiting at UofM? I haven't been in Detroit for years, but it sounds pretty bleak.

“Top to bottom Michigan is about excellence, greatness. You have my pledge I will carry forward the excellence of Michigan football." Jim Harbaugh, December 30, 2014

And that $7,500 is pretty misleading. It's the average price of a house, yes, but not a home, if you follow. If you're an average family or average guy selling your house and moving, and it's maintained and upkept and all that, you're clearly going to get a lot more than $7,500. Probably not six figures, but you're not stuck with a $7,500 home. It's not like the citizens are hurting there. The price is dragged way down by the empty shells and abandoned places that get sold for like $500 - or even a buck.

Not that that's such a great thing either. But the city isn't sucking so bad that average folks can sell their car for more than their house.

It didn't seem to hurt this prior class unless you call a top 10 recruiting class a failure.

In response to the first poster, Detroit is in the tank due in part to two things. One: the men who have run the city for the last 40 years and the party that they were part of. Detroit is a very good example of what will happen to country if one party has it's way, imho.

cosigned
To Add: I think politics has little to do with Detroit's woes. There are 2 main causes to the state of Detroit today: 1. The riots of 1967 2. The EPIC FAIL of an auto-industry and its outsourcing of jobs. Correct me if I'm wrong

You don't think seeing Detroit constantly in political scandal has anything to do with its problematic position? You don't think Kilpatrick hasn't hurt the city? Or the current Cobo Hall fiasco? Or the constant fighting between city and suburbs?

I'm not saying that the political scandals have nothing to do with the city's problems, because they are problems themselves. But, I don't think that those caused the state of Detroit as it is, they more hurt the city's political image and any possibility of healing the city.

Don't fucking call me naive, when the real naivety lies in thinking Detroit's problems are only 10 years old.

My whole family used to live next to Tiger Stadium. They moved out in the 60s. I'm fully aware the problems have been there for decades. The problems that exist perpetuate Detroit's descent into more problems.

Really. We agree on that. If our political leaders don't want to fix the city, and instead just want to personally enrich themselves while the city continues to suffer, there is little you or I can do other than (1) move out or (2) cause a revolution. (1) has happened already, (2) will never happen.

agreed, we see eye to eye.
I've got close ties to Detroit as well (my family was also part of the "white flight"), so it's a subject I'm kind of passionate about.
Detroit may be an eyesore but it's got more soul than any city I know!

not simply because of the auto industry, although of course that hurts. The auto industry (which I consulted to for 15 years) was (compared to today) healthy 20 years ago, and Detroit was only marginally-very marginally-better off then. It's demise is an epic failure of political leadership due to corruption, cronyism, incompetence, and the lack of political alternatives. Its city council has been exposed several times over the years as a hive of personal antipathy, low work ethic, and a short-sighted black nationalism movement that while admirably attempting to deliver benefits to it's people, instead has the counter-productive policy of refusing outside investment and help. Five years ago a local entrepreneur wanted to give--give, the city $100 million to set up charter schools (in a city where its manifest failure of a school system graduates 17% of the students who enroll). This effort ended in failure due to bureaucratic in-fighting and resistance from the teacher's union. Last week a Cobo Center plan that aimed to expand and save the main center for Detroit conventions and tourism failed because City Council voted against it, with the President saying that the benefits would accrue quote, (addressing a white local Teamster's official who advocated for the plan) "to people like you, not to people like us."

This is a sad, depressing mess. And those who say that it is not due to lack of political and ideological alternatives, when the governing philosophy has been the same for 40 years, simply has no credibility.

"Before I could pull the trigger, I was hit by lightning, and bitten by a cobra."

Mostly though it is the union contracts. The foreign non union auto makers have a TOTAL labor cost per hour of around $40 while we have a TOTOAL labor cost of around $70. TOTAL labor cost includes retiree pensions and health care cost, etc. Going bankrupt may be the best thing for the Big Three to return to profitabilty because it is the only way they can break the union contracts. It is a shame. I am not trying to stir the pot. That is my two cents on the matter.

or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

As much as I support unions in principle, I think you're very right with this. My family is in the auto-business and this is what our discussions have come to as well.
While I don't think the Big Three are completely blameless in this, the unions have had a huge hand in driving the industry into the ground.

Actually, Ford already has a deal with the unions that takes a lot of those problems off their hands. In the future, the union will be responsible for a lot of the stuff that has made Ford's costs so much higher than the foreign companies (and the other two Big 3 have the same problem). I think that aspect of the contract takes effect this year or next year.

Ford is simply being managed much better than the other two right now. There's a reason they're the only one that didn't ask for bailout money immediately like the other two, but instead only a line of credit in case they ran into trouble. I think Chrysler's in deep trouble -- I'm pretty convinced that Cerberus really doesn't know what it's doing with an auto company. And I think their products are getting worse, which is bad when your reliability is already crappy.

Our auto industry is uber-subsidized. The gov't has for decades ignored improving mass/freight transit ... our entire infrastructure is auto-based. What more can a company ask for, than the gov't to basically force only one transit market to serve the majority needs of the country?

More than labor cost is healthcare. Chrysler owes more than its worth in projected healthcare costs to employees and retirees. Now that is a subsidy the foreign competitors enjoy, but not in the US, and is also a big reason for outsourcing in general.

Finally, as for gas guzzlers, that is a great example of what killed the Big Three. They had already declared bankruptcy, in terms of long-term viable corporate strategy, by stepping-up production of gas guzzlers (due to short-term increased revenue) despite the overwhelming cultural tide of eco-friendliness that has been building for about 20 years. It should have been painfully obvious after the fuel price increases of 2001... people want to save money. The market was changing and the guys at the top failed to adjust. Unfortunately, everyone suffers for their short-sightedness, complacency, and culture of stagnation.

The big three dominate the market share for SUV's and trucks. Also people aren't really lining up to buy small carsanymore. That was just a fad. When the gas prices dropped the "need" to buy the little econo-cars died just as quickly. Consumers are fickle. I dont' think it is short sighted to produce the only product that makes your company a profit.

The reason for the "govt ignoring mass transit" is because outside of major metro areas it really isn't feasible nor is it cost effective. Iti s the layout of the country more than the govt ignoring it. Europe can have a great mass transit system because it is small compared to the US. Also to call the "govt ignoring mass transit" a subsidy is a HUGE stretch.

or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

I would like to begin by saying that there are very few people who I despise more than Kwame, Dennis Archer and Coleman Young, but to claim that Detroit is in the state its in because of those people, or their party, is completely, totally, and unquestionably retarded. I'm sure it has nothing to do with arguably the worst school system in the country, the fall of the American auto industry, or any other number of factors. Way to pin it all on the mayors and the democrats.

Coleman Young and the city council were/are the primary problems. Dennis Archer actually was trying to move things in the right direction (and a lot of the resurrection of the downtown is due to things he did and Kwame to some extent continued), but he couldn't deal with the artards on the city council and the flat-out racists in the city who still wanted the race-baiting Coleman Young and his disastrous "eff the suburbs" policies. So Archer refused to run again.

I mean, all you need to know about the city council is embodied in the whole African Town thing.

This response will likely go unread by the person I'm addressing but I feel the need to speak about the "white flight" as I feel it is a term thrown around far too often without the proper context.

I'll start by saying that yes, there was racism involved. Whites were afraid of blacks. But I think there's deeper issues under the surface here that go unmentioned because racism is such a convenient explanation.... so I'll begin:

Like much of the rest of the country, the Detroit area experienced a huge boom after the War. With the building of highways, portions of western Wayne and Oakland counties, along with much of Macomb, became easily accessible for the first time. A housing boom soon followed. Like elsewhere in the country, younger white people decided to leave the city and start their families in the more spacious new suburbs. Slowly, this depleted the city of the next generation of white families.

It's important to note that blacks had always been in Detroit proper. It's not like they all lived out in Novi and they swapped houses with white people running to get away from the city. They had moved into the city and whites had moved into what is technically (though never referred to as such, obviously) north Detroit. Both the Northwest and Northeast sides were amongst the last parts of the city to become predominantly black, in fact. Cities like Southfield and Royal Oak had functioned as suburbs that housed the more middle class white citizens for decades prior to the housing boom, as well.

Then came the riots. Most of us only know them from pictures and film, but if they even begin to do them justice than it was a horrifying event. You have people who are already afraid of blacks (the cultural norm at the time) and suddenly the city is being turned into a war zone. And people fled, yes. But it was just an acceleration of a process that had already begun and which really had little to do with race.

We can talk about the oppressed minority all day, but the post riot situation in Detroit left the remaining whites in a pretty bad situation themselves: With the white population aging fast and the black population growing and mobilizing, blacks were quickly able to take over every facet of the city government. Coleman Young was swept into office on a platform of turning Detroit into, to quote the man himself, an experiment in running an "African city" in America. Steps were taken to remove whites from the police force by barring those who had moved out of the city from serving. That's a pretty massive change pretty quickly. Any kind of change happening that fast is scary. As the children of the white people who remained grew up they all got out, too.

The impact of the white flight? I don't think racism plays more than a small role in that. Simply put, white people no longer felt safe in the city and businesses pulled out as a result. Coleman Young did the city no favors with his go it alone attitude. He and his cronies used race as a tool to stay in power... by continuing to blame whites for everything long after whites ceased to have a say in anything, he managed to skirt his own inadequacies as a politician while maintaining a sense of oppression that no longer really existed. To this day this is a problem in the city, Dennis Archer did more in 7 years to help that city than Coleman Young did in 19 and yet he was still branded an "uncle Tom". On the flip side it alienated and enraged the white population, who couldn't understand the hostility.

Anyway, I just thought it was important to get that out there.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

and everything but the auto industry are run by people with the same philosophy, which has not changed or adapted in 40 years. This philosophy has failed utterly to improve people's lives. That the same party and philosophy has run Detroit for 40 years is a fact, not an opinion. I am not condemning Democrats nationally, (I voted for Obama) or even in other parts of Michigan, and its clear that there have been very successful Democratic Presidents, Mayors, Governors etc. But the problems of Detroit are self-made, and perpetuated by a dead philosophy bereft of ideas that has failed in every way conceivable.

"Before I could pull the trigger, I was hit by lightning, and bitten by a cobra."

I like how you talk about the failure of Detroit's public schools and its crappy economy like they're things that just happen, like the weather. It couldn't have anything to do with stupid city government policies that have spurred legions of taxpayers and businesses to leave, could it? It has nothing to do with the fact that many city politicians run on race-baiting, anti-suburban platforms, does it?
Just last week, the Detroit City Council turned down a proposal to take the Cobo Hall moneypit off its hands and expand it. The DCC preferred keeping a crumbling, money-losing convention center under city ownership to giving "those people" control.

Don't forget the zoo fiasco a few years ago, when the city council resisted outside help to keep the zoo open because it would rather close the zoo and maintain control than keep it open and cede control to anybody else.

People come to sports blogs to get away from politics. There are numerous political blogs out there. Why don't you go find a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly blog. I'm sure they will love your opinions there.

All you seem to do here is belittle those with whom you don't agree and try to tell them what to do and how to think.

As for your assumption that I don't understand the relationships between sports and politics, you don't know who I am, what I know, or what I don't know.

So, it is basically ignorant of you to ASSume anything about me, and more ignorant to try and tell me what threads I may or may not read or to tell me in which threads I may or may not participate. From the chronically negative, combative, and opinionated nature of your "contributions," though, I am not surprised to see ASSumption or ignorance.

I know it's a cold day up there, but not the kind of "cold day" it will before I allow any poster on a blog, especially you, to tell me what to do.

Since all you seem to want to do here is be mean and disagree with people in an inflammatory way, maybe you should FOLLOW YOUR OWN ADVICE about not posting on any of these threads. It would certainly make a small part of the world a better place.

"People come to sports blogs to get away from politics. There are numerous political blogs out there. Why don't you go find a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly blog. I'm sure they will love your opinions there."

Does this ring a bell? You told someone to go somewhere else to talk about politics and then you berate ME for telling you to avoid commenting/reading if you don't like it?

Pot, meet kettle.

As for your assertion that I only try to prove people wrong, you find what you're looking for. When people make mistakes, I point them out. When people ask questions or want to discuss a topic, I answer question when I can or provide information when possible.

In case you haven't figured it out, there's a fair number of people on here who find you annoying, too. So chill.

Detroit is usually a great place for basketball and an OK place for football. I think this is partially due to economics and partially due to the weather. On the weather end, the North usually produces more indoor sports talent and the South usually produces more outdoor sports talent.

Economically, there probably isn't a lot of money for junior football leagues in Detroit right now. So, elite talent has to rise out of a situation where they only play high school football for four months and keep in shape with track, baskeball, or other sports during their seasons. In the summer, with no school activities, there are more opportunities for AAU basketball than any organized football.

I am very curious about the effect this will have on the University. As a recent alumnus, I am quite concerned about the future. Does UM have to go private or at least semi-private to ensure quality talent if a lot of well educated and intelligent families move out of the state? I think the direction of our university is definitely something to keep our eye on.

First off, that number is pretty misleading - like MaizeAndBlueWahoo pointed out, a large number of those houses are being bought dirt cheap and torn down, so that deflates the value. Go to any decent neighborhood in the city (e.g. Indian Village), and the homes are reasonably priced.

As for UM as a school and the feared dearth of local talent, I think that might be overstated a bit. Sure, people are leaving, but this region still has a large number of intelligent, hard-working individuals with decent school systems. Sure, UM may stop presuming every top-30 kid from schools like Rochester or Troy are instant UM students, but I don't foresee the intelligence of the region dropping precariously. Plus, UM has been moving toward more out-of-state admittance for years - it consistently is one of the most expensive public universities for both in-state and out-of-state individuals, and I forget where I read it, but they have had a substantial percentage of "outsiders" admitted over the past few years.

As for the drop in talent, I'm not sure how much that will affect national-level programs like UM and (to a lesser extent) MSU, but I do think you will see a drop in the talent at places like Western and CMU. Those schools rely on in-state kids to fill their ranks, and while they do recruit across the state, GR and Detroit are the two hotbeds. In basketball, I'm not sure how much the economy will hurt recruiting, since UM can recruit nationally and kids can always practice basketball far easier than football. If anything, the entity most hurt from any diminished talent will be the Freep, which will have to let go of whomever writes those stupid "UM is turning its back on the state" articles every NLOI day.

UM has an excellent national and international reputation and people interested in a good education will continue to enroll. UM has always drawn students from around the country. IIRC, in 1987, the Free Press ran an article blasting the university for having more stringent academic standards for in-state students than for out-of-state students. They accused the university of enrolling more out-of-state students in order to receive the higher out-of-state tuition. This was an option because UM was a national draw and UM continues to be a national draw.

The reputations of Michigan and Detroit have both suffered in recent years. But Detroit has had longstanding problems and this has not discouraged out-of-state enrollment at UM. AA is just far enough from Detroit that the everyday problems of the city do not filter down much. Having Detroit nearby may actually be a recruiting advantage for athletes who want access to major city and all it has to offer (e.g. pro sports, big buildings, trouble to be found). Student athletes can take day (or night) trips into the city and return to the safe confines of AA.

Hey, Flint has been worse than Detroit for a while, but MSU manages to find good basketball talent there. I wouldn't worry about the athletic talent in Detroit. I'd worry about the city itself, but not the talent.

I was saying the school may have to go to private or semi private because there will be a decrease in the talent of the state for two reasons. 1) The state requires an admittance of a 2:1 ratio of instate to out of state students in order to get funds. UM is a nationally renowned school that can draw great talent to the school. The question is when does the talent gap between state and out of state get large enough in quantity that they decide to become semi private at least in certain departments to keep the reputation high. Business school, public policy, engineering, etc. 2) The decreased population and economy will strangle the state budget. I know only 20% of the money probably comes from the state but if that number eventually becomes 10%. Why would the school want to be monitored by the state if they aren't benefiting substantially from that relationship.

Because that's the point of a university: to draw the best "talent" from across the country, have high ratings and make shitloads in out of state tuition while fucking over the people in your own state.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

The Big Three killed public transportation in Detroit. It follows, then, that the Big Three, while helping build the city, eventually helped kill the city. The lack of a viable public transportation system in the city and surrounding suburbs is, in my mind, the single biggest reason Detroit is dying.

This is really a gentle attempt at sarcasm, but: public transportation? Really?

I don't think that Comerica left Detroit for the great Dallas public transportation.

I don't think Leopold Brothers left Ann Arbor for Denver because of the Mile High City's great public transportation.

I don't think the hundreds workers who moved to Wyoming moved for the public transportation.

In fact, all three places I mentioned have gawdawful public transit systems. There are a BUNCH of reasons why Detroit/Michigan has fallen as far as it has. Public transportation has to be like 2,459th on the list of most-important ones.

You're remarkably uninformed if you think that public transportation is not a top 5, maybe top 3 issue for why Detroit is dying. See my response to the guy who called me a retard.

I think suburbanites don't go downtown because they live 45 minutes away, and so the wealth of Metro Detroit stays in the suburbs when if hoping on a train and being downtown in 15 minutes could result in millions of dollars spent at the casinos, at restaurants and clubs, and at other events.

If you look at Chicago, the great places to visit there are where the public transportation stops are. Great cities are aligned this way - it is convenient for tourists in addition to helping people that work downtown also live in the city without the need of a car. Same for New York, San Fran, many European cities, etc.

It's definitely not a requirement, but it's a factor. I know that many of my friends at UofM would have gone into to Detroit more often (as in, more than 0 times) if they could ride an efficient commuter train. Chicago followed this blueprint and it is really the only midwestern city that isn't following the same downward trend.

I'm glad you decided to respond intelligently. Allow us to think about this for a moment. Detroit is incredibly spread out. Boston/LA/Manhattan combined could fit into an area the size of Detroit, and yet they have a population that dwarfs Detroit's. Public transportation, linking parts of the city, the suburbs, and cities like Ann Arbor is absolutely essential to creating a viable, livable city. Boston, Chicago, NYC, hell, ANN ARBOR have expansive public transportation systems that connect all areas of their cities with ease. They have viable downtowns because people can cheaply and efficiently get from point A to point B. Nobody will move to downtown Detroit if there isn't an easy way to get around that doesn't require a car, and all the costs of parking, gas, etc. People would be much more likely to move into neighborhoods outside of downtown if there was a train station down the block that could link them to downtown in minutes. It is completely ridiculous to say that Detroit not having a subway/light-rail system has nothing to do with Detroit being a dying city. Find me one other major city without an expansive public transportation system.

I hesitate to throw my hat in this thread but this is actually very true. Not that there is one and only one reason why Detroit has failed, but it can't be overstated that what the Big Three did in building The Motor City essentially served to cripple what had been a great Midwestern city. They gutted the public transportation system and carved up old neighborhoods with an expressways system that further disconnected the suburbs from the city, whites from blacks, and rich (and middle class) from poor. Then sure enough, as though to illustrate the city's downfall, when the city built a modern public transportation system, you got the People Mover, which is pretty much a real life Springfield Monorail.

I lived in the Riverfront Apartments from 1985-88, after I finished school. That is my only personal connection with Detroit. It was apparent to people I knew that had worked downtown for many years that city policies destroyed faith that investment would be given a chance to create a normal return on capital. At the simplest of levels, that has to turn around before Detroit can improve. No faith in capitalist principles, no investment, no turn around. The mid to late 1980s felt to me like boom years, but the lack of faith prevented progress. I was a hard core liberal then, and the people talking to me were active in the Democratic party locally. In any event, I don't see any effect on Michigan recruiting.

Ummh, I really don't care at all about housing values in Detroit and the fate of the Big 3 and unions and the mayors and race and politics and political parties. I don't care if all of Detroit is a slum and goes down the toilet. I don't care if GM and Chrysler go bankrupt, and union wages are cut in half, and auto company management is cut by two thirds. What will be, will be. If GM/Ford/Chrysler produce an inferior and more expensive product than Toyota and Honda and VW and Hyundai, and fail as a result, they're only reaping what they've sown for years.

My original questions had to do ONLY with the relationship between things in the Detroit area and:

Regarding the comments, thanks to the grammar police for the correction. The comments on Flint and Basketball recruits at State also make sense.

Regarding sports recruiting, I'm still curious if there is any kind of causal connection between the economy of an area and the athletes produced. Obviously, there are many, many, variables, and there are always exceptions to the rule. But as a casual observer, it seems that many depressed areas produce an inordinate number of athletes in relationship to their population. For comparison, let's focus on Pahokee. From the articles I have read, it looks like a shithole down there. It seems that there is very little money available in the school system for sports and extra-curriculars, making it analogous to the Detroit area school system. And yet, Pahokee is an incredible hotbed for athletes. IIRC, some of these athletes have been clear that football is their ticket out of town. It can't just be the warm weather, because I don't see nearly as many jocks coming out of Palm Beach or San Marino or Newport Beach or other high rent areas in the South as I do see coming out of Pahokee.

So to restate my question in a different way: is there an inverse correlation between the economy in Detroit and the production of athletes, such that as the economic infrastructure worsens, the number of gifted athletes coming out of the area (Cissko, Will Campbell, etc.) improves?

“Top to bottom Michigan is about excellence, greatness. You have my pledge I will carry forward the excellence of Michigan football." Jim Harbaugh, December 30, 2014

There may be a correlation. As other opportunities decrease, people may increasingly turn to athletics. A downside, at least for football & hockey (due to being extremely expensive to support at a high school) may suffer while talented athletes tend increasingly toward sports requiring less infrastructure (bball, soccer, track & field, etc.)

Purely speculation, of course.

My biggest concern regards the financial status of U of M. Perhaps some of you recall, in 2007, during a brief period of time the state government literally SHUT DOWN. That was when things were considerably better, with regards to the state budget, than they are now. (The budget was the reason for the shutdown). If shit like that keeps up, it will have a severe, negative effect on the university as long as it is tied to the state.

Is not nearly as bad a place to be as people seem to think. A lot of bad shit goes down, no doubt, but things like that happen everywhere. I would except a slanderous article from a city like Chicago, one of the most elitist and corrupt cities in the country (if not THE most).

Take a given neighborhood in eastside Detroit and compare it to soutside Chicago ... how much difference should we really expect? So, Chicago has a large population of affluent individuals... the Detroit area does, too, they just live in different municipalities (mostly). And Chicago has slums as bad as the worst in Detroit.

What does it matter, how good things are for the best-off in a city if the worst-off have it as bad as the worst in the overall worst-off city?

Have you actually been to the South Side? To what slums in Chicago are you referring? I'm a SE Michigan transplant living in Chicago now, and I used to think the same thing. I'd had my brief, car-bound excursions into the east side and through the city on Grand River (though I didn't spend any really significant time there, to be sure) and that's basically what I thought the South Side of Chicago would look like, too.

Now my wife works in the southwest, in what is generally deemed to be one of the rougher areas of the city, and from what I can tell - it ain't as bad as Detroit. Chicago has a lot of problems, and the segregation of its neighborhoods is pretty deplorable, but it is simply not as blighted as the D. I think you'd have to take sub-neighborhood samples - such as what existed at Cabrini Green before it was closed down - in order to match Detroit in terms of degree of urban crisis. Again, I'll admit that this is largely my own impression, but the overall vitality of Chicago as a city vis a vis Detroit is indisputably a stark contrast.

Also, the corruption of the Daley Dynasty likely will come to bite the city in the ass at some point down the road, but there is, sadly, something to be said for corruption linked to overall competence and acumen (here's looking at you, Kwame.)

1) Michigan Football averages about 4 to 6 recruits from the State of Michigan
2) Detroit has been a total disaster since the '70's. From then until now Michigan Football has been decidedly spectacular (ignoring 2008, of course)